The Tipping Point

I had been a mother of 3 for approximately 4 and a half months when I found out - surprise! - I was going to be a mother of 4. Consequently, much of our {very} brief time as a family of 5 was sort of a blur.

I have said for several years now that it takes me about a year to adjust after a new little one is born. Some women transition seamlessly into motherhood, easily adapting and flexing when new treasures join the brood, figuring out how to feed all the mouths, wipe all the bottoms, prepare all the meals, wash all the clothes, teach all the school, clean all the things, and maintain all (most) of the sanity.

I am not one of those moms. I spend at least half of the first year of each child's life in pajamas, just trying to keep from falling too far behind on all the goals. So by the time I got to the point as a mother of 3 where things would have been normal, I was enormously pregnant, wearing support-hose, and trying to make sure everyone had a decent birthday celebration before I gave birth again. Girly Whirl was born exactly a month and a half after Little Man's first birthday.

So perhaps my voice and experience as a mother of 3 is not the most sound, but I've had more than a handful of friends ask me lately. And the funny thing is, I know a lot of people who are currently expecting their third baby, so I wanted to jot this down, because it was true for me and might be for others, and I want to encourage you:

Three is the tipping point.

I understand now why a lot of families have 3 children. Because buddy, when you get to 3, for at least the first part of that first year, you might feel like you just can't get (not to mention stay) caught up. Especially if Thing 1 and Thing 2 are still pretty young and close in age, because you're in the throes of child training. And as a mother of little ones, I can assure you that things would be a lot simpler many days if my name tag read, rather than "Momma" as "Referee." Whew. Then they get bigger. And louder. And the discipleship needs grow more complex. All while the 3 year old is being...well, a three year old, and the baby is crying because he has been waiting for you to change his diaper for quite a little while now.

The three-kid phase was tough for me in other ways, though, ways that are really bigger in a different sense. Really hard and humbling ways. Because even though I have long been the girl trying to impart a sense of freedom to other women and moms about how you just can't do it all, I had still been trying to do it all. And three was when I had to start saying no:

No: I can't bake all our bread anymore. Not right now.

No: I can't cloth diaper these days.

No: I can't help lead Bible study again next year.

No: I can't cook every meal from scratch every single night.

No: I can't make baby food this time around.

No: I can't get to the gym, might as well cancel the membership for a little while.

No: I can't keep my home Martha-Stewart-white-glove-clean like I used to.

No: I can't blog frequently anymore. (Although that wasn't the real reason for my huge hiatus, but true nonetheless.)

{Sigh.} I had been telling other women and moms, "It's okay to say no - you can't do it all," but it took a while for me to believe that was true for me, too. And it was hard for this chick.

But, something else I have said - and really truly believe - is that our time is our most valuable currency. And just like if you spend money on one thing, then the money is not available to spend on something else, I had to choose wisely where I would spend the time that I used to use on the above things.

Everything is an exchange: every single thing I do, means I am not doing something else, or sometimes 4 or 5 something elses. I must weigh and choose, to be sure that the things I am doing will be worth the "not" of something else.

Even now: writing right now means that I am not folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen, finishing a sewing project, or working out. Those are just the first 4 things that popped into my mind as I glanced around my quiet napping house. So my "no I can't bake all our bread anymore" was because I needed (kneaded? ha, oh puns) that time for other, more pressing things. Maybe it was school, or snuggling with big kids, or going for walks, or sitting down and reading with the kids, or taking a shower...or anything else that I realized was more important in that moment during this all too short season.

But I must tell you this secret, this secret about the tipping point:

Oh. So. Worth it.

When you get beyond your capacity, you have no other choice to rely on The One whose strength never fails. He never faints, nor grows weary. You press on, and press in, and trust in Him, who promises to be near to you.

You see these little faces that look like your own, and feel warm, wiggly bodies, and wipe away salty bitter tears, kiss boo-boos, rejoice in fruit and growth in their hearts, play silly games, read books a million times, and tuck them in bed with tears in your own eyes when you suddenly look one day and realize how much more of their bed they take up than they used to. And yeah, maybe you don't do all the things you used to, and maybe you don't take a shower for three days in a row, and maybe it's been weeks or months since you had a good long chat with a friend, or worked out, or read a book with chapters in it or dusted your ceiling fans.

But friends, this is what your time is for. As the saying goes, the days are long, but the years are short, and this - these hearts and souls - are what your time has been given you for. So saying no to all those other things, when my world tipped and all the extras spilled out, wasn't so bad: it meant saying yes to these other jobs that I won't have forever to do. I don't get them forever.

My oldest, my firstborn, the one who named me Mama...is huge. I can hug him without bending down - how much longer until I am reaching up? He doesn't really need to hold hands in parking lots, because I can trust him to stay close. And yet I can still close my eyes and see his red, wrinkly face breathing for the first time and smell his yummy newborn smell. I am nearly a third of the way through the time that most parents have with their children before they are ready to spread their wings. A third of our time together is gone into vapor that I never get back.

I can bake bread and dust daily for the rest of my life: I can only play Legos for a little while.

Here's the other thing about that tipping point: it only feels like utter madness for a little while. Just understand - if you're feeling the crunch from a recent arrival, or expecting another little one - that chaos is the new normal, and you should be fine. :) Now, as a mother of four, our house is pretty nuts from kid-up to kid-down. And pretty messy around the clock. But now I don't flip, I just smile and say, "Why, oh why, is there a sock on the kitchen counter?" Because it won't be there forever, you know? We'll settle into our routine and rhythm as a family of 6, and then one day - God willing - it will be disrupted again to make way for another little Thread. And that's awesome, because this is what my time is for.

So my closing thoughts...first, when you hit your own tipping point have a little grace for yourself, and be okay with saying no when you need to.

And the other thing is...don't be too quick to assume that you've reached your utmost capacity just because you're in the utmost chaotic season of your family. This for me is when the youngest is younger than 6 months, and I feel like I can safely say, the oldest is younger than 6 or 7. You might have a completed biological family, but in my humble opinion, the time to make that huge (and possibly permanent) decision is not when you still have a wee baby in the home, and mom's hormones are insane and everyone is sleep-deprived. Those conditions are not conducive to logical thought. Though the flip side to that is that we all have God-given capacities, and while His Word says that blessed is the man whose quiver is full, He doesn't create us all with the same sized quiver, yes? ;) People always assume I'm pro-big-families, when I'm really just pro-families, period. There is a difference, and Kevin DeYoung said it much better than I can. :)

Never meant for this to get so long. {blush} Hoping that if you stuck with it, it was an encouragement to you.